The Turkey Tussle

by Anne Hagan

  It was my turn to get excited, “Who was the deputy? Do you remember his name?”

  “Boy do I; it was Deputy Ackerman...Alex Ackerman.”

  “Ackerman, you’re sure?” I asked as I tapped my chin. Lying, I said, “I haven’t heard his name before. So, he went over there to the crime scene then? Did any of you go with him or go over there later.”

  Lucy shook her head no. “We’d started dinner dear. Mother wouldn’t have had that and what would we have done? That was no place for a lady.”

  “Whatever became of Ackerman? Did he marry your sister?”

  “Oh heavens no! Why that day was the end for him; you see, Father didn’t approve of him at all. Lottie was only just 17 but finished with school. She was a bright girl...still is. He was several years older than she and a cop to boot. Father didn’t want Lottie marrying beneath her station. Now mind you, we weren’t high society but the man was off getting his hands dirtied in a murder scene, as Father put it, and that was far too sordid a thing for my father’s sensibilities.”

  “So you didn’t see him again after that day?”

  “Well, yes and no. Lottie eventually found a man father deemed suitable and they married but that was more than a year later. I don’t know that she ever saw...saw Alex again. The next time he rang round on the telephone, Father spoke with him. I did see him in the village, here and there, after that Thanksgiving but certainly not as frequently as he had been around while he was pursuing my sister and, within a month of the murder, I’d say, I stopped seeing him in the area at all.”

  “Did he stay with the Sheriff’s department for long after that?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea, Dear.”

  Chapter 13

  Saturday Evening, November 7th

  The kitchen was barely managed chaos. Hannah had gone into Zanesville, to the school for the name draw and the short lab she’d said would follow. Since she’d started school, she’d made dinner most evenings; often putting things together at the bakery during slower times to practice for classes later and then bringing them home for them all to share before she went off on her way. I hadn’t had to do much cooking.

  It was past dinner time and neither her nor Mel were home yet. Jef and I were on our own and getting hungry. I was sure Mel would be too by the time she made it in. I’d heard Zanesville took the brunt of the Friday night storm when she called earlier in the day and she was knee deep in the cleanup effort herself and would be working far longer than she typically did when she went in on Saturday.

  I’m not a bad cook but my repertoire is small. Coupled with caring for a toddler and dealing with a dog who wants to both torment the child and have a taste of everything I withdrew from fridge and cupboard, I had my work cut out for me. I settled on breakfast for dinner and went about frying bacon and flipping pancakes.

  I was adding four small cakes to the pan that held another four keeping warm in the oven when Mel walked in. Boo had heard her, of course, and had actually left my side at the stove to greet her at the door. She backed off, uncharacteristically for her, when she caught a scent from her other mama.

  “Hey there,” Mel reached for the terrier and said. “That’s no way to greet your hero returned home!” Boo circled her legs and gave her a sniff but didn’t jump and wag her tail like she normally did.

  Jef crawled out from under the table, stood and toddled her way when he heard her speak.

  To him, she said “Hi there buddy.” She ruffled his hair but didn’t pick him up when he reached for her. “I’m all dirty and stinky,” she told him instead. “You’re looking pretty clean...cleaner than me.”

  “Dirt,” he said.

  “Yes, dirty.”

  She came over to me and bussed my lips quickly but then backed away from me like Boo had first done to her. “I really do smell. We had some places around the department and the jail that really needed cleaned up after the storm. Unfortunately for us, business at the jail is a little slow right now.”

  “What?” I asked. “Not a lot of prisoners to do your dirty work for you?”

  “Nope,” she grinned. “We have some in, waiting trial or waiting sentencing but not too many in the lockup just doing their time that I could detail to help.”

  She turned and walked back toward the door where she’d dropped her go bag. She picked it up, carried it over to the table and set it down on a chair. “How long till dinner?”

  “About ten minutes,” I said as I added a few more ladles of batter to the griddle then peeked over at the bacon.

  “Oh! Okay. I’ll deal with this later. Let me jump in the shower real quick.”

  On her way of the kitchen she half turned and said back over her shoulder, “I took some leftovers for lunch and the containers are in my bag. Sorry. I didn’t get a chance to rinse them. I was outside most of the day and lucky I got to eat at all.”

  “Poor baby,” Dana called after he, as she continued toward the bedroom. “I’ll take care of them so they don’t stay in there for a week until you notice them again because they’re all nasty and smelly too.”

  The cakes weren’t quite ready to turn and Jef was headed toward her bag so I thought it best to deal with that right away. I unzipped the top of the medium sized duffel Mel carried out the door most every day she was going out in uniform. Expecting to find a plastic container or two, instead I found a file folder laying on top of the rest of her gear. It was labled, ‘Mathis, Tanner D., 19721123’. She’d gone over to records storage and withdrawn the case file.

  Shocked that she’d done it, I was motionless at first but then my curiosity got the better of me and I flipped it open to skim it quickly. It was a half inch thick or so of the older style velum paper reports used to be written on and filled in forms on blue lettered mimeograph paper.

  The sound of bacon popping on the stove got my attention. I laid the file down on the table and hustled back to the range. It looked plenty done so I turned off the fire, flipped the pancakes over and then went back to the bacon pan and scooped the strips onto a plate lined with a paper towel I already had waiting.

  I wanted to dive right into the file but Jef had a hand in Mel’s duffel. She’d walked out of the room with her gun belt still on but I didn’t know what other dangers her gear bag might hold for him. I reached around him and zipped it closed again then scooped him up to put him in his high chair. That’s when I caught a whiff of him.

  “Whew, little man! That isn’t bacon Aunt Dana smells!” First, I situated him on my hip then I reached to turn the griddle off. That accomplished, I toted him, Mel’s bag and the file upstairs. After depositing the bag and the file in her den, I moved on to Jef’s room to change his diaper.

  When I was finished, I walked right past the den and back downstairs. It was killing me not to be able to sit down and pour over it but I knew Mel took a risk drawing it and bringing it home. I at least owed her dinner.

  Carrying Jef for the sake of speed, even though he’d been climbing up and sliding down the stairs before he ever actually walked, I hurried back downstairs and started cracking eggs.

  “Thanks for getting that file,” I said when Mel appeared back in the kitchen a few minutes later, her hair wet from the shower.

  “I don’t know what you;re talking about.” She grinned at me, her eyes twinkling.

  Going to her, I reached up around her neck and pulled her a few inches down to me for a kiss. She smelled much better. Happy to have her home and grateful for what she’d done, I did my best to show her my thanks.

  She opened her lips, inviting my tongue in and I started to take advantage and deepen the kiss until Jef squirmed his way in between us and then Boo, jealous, tried to join him.

  Mel pulled back laughing but I sighed.

  “You’re cooking anyway and I know you don’t want to fry my sunny side up eggs over hard...or do you?”

  “Oh! The eggs!” My hand flew to my face but I recovered quickly and moved back to the stove. Looking into the pan, I
said, “These are already past your style and on the way to mine so I’ll just break what’s left of the yolks and fry them hard then put two more in for you. Why don’t you get him set up in his chair and get him some milk?”

  Going through that file would just have to wait. I had a family to feed.

  Chapter 13

  After dinner, Jef was a sticky mess. I swore he ate butter and syrup as his meal but, in reality, I saw that he’d done well with everything he’d been given other than his egg. Boo had been all too happy to dispatch that for him. I ran him into our room for a bath while Mel tackled the mess in the kitchen.

  Hannah came home from her shortened night at school just as I was pulling Jef out of the tub. She took over getting him dressed while I quizzed her about the name draw.

  “Her name is Morgan Barber.”

  “Sounds sophisticated.”

  “Mmm,” she shook her head, “I don’t think so. She’s actually pretty quiet...keeps to herself most of the time.”

  “Older or younger than you?”

  Hannah shrugged as she concentrated for a few seconds on pulling Jef’s pajama bottoms on. That done, she said, “My age, I guess or maybe a couple of years older. I don’t know anything about her other than that she doesn’t hang around with the younger...people in class. She doesn’t hang around with anybody during breaks. She hardly talks unless Chef is talking to her or he calls on her.”

  “Does she seem to know what she’s doing?”

  “I guess. I don’t really know.” She blew out a breath as she picked Jef up and then set him on his feet on the floor. “I’m going to find out soon though. I, uh, hope it’s all right. We’ve gotten some basic specs for guidance. We have to take those and we have to have a meeting right away to plan out our presentation to the client. She’s coming to class to meet with us on Wednesday so I uh, asked Morgan to come down here tomorrow around 11:00 but we can, uh, go over to the bakery if we’re going to be in the way here.”

  That last bit came out, in what sounded to me, as a little bit reluctantly. I knew Hannah hadn’t even told the Chef that led her program that the bakery she ‘worked at’ was actually hers. I didn’t know if it was fear of being held to a higher standard than the other students or if she was just shy about her accomplishments. I suspected it was a little of both.

  “Hannah, sweetie, it’s fine, fine anytime. I’m just surprised you didn’t want to do it at school on Monday.”

  “Chef already told us, we need to work together outside of class; our time in class will be full. And, Morgan didn’t even tell me where she lives. She seemed pretty eager to meet wherever I wanted to...the most interested I’ve ever seen her in anything that I can think of.”

  Late that night, I was unable to sleep. I’d hung out with Mel and Hannah watching television and talking with Hannah about what she’d be spending the next month of her classes doing and then I’d gone to bed when Mel did. As I lay next to her, I rubbed her back. She didn’t even try to make small talk. She was so tired, she drifted right off but my mind was working in overdrive. I just kept thinking about what could be in that case file.

  By 1:15 AM, I couldn’t stand it anymore. As quietly as I could, I crept out of bed and upstairs to Mel’s den. Boo, curious and apparently wide awake too, followed me.

  Hannah’s door on the left, at the top of the landing was cracked open, probably so she could hear Jef if he woke in the night. I went into the den and closed the door as softly as I could then tiptoed to the desk and fumbled around for the lamp. Mel’s go bag was just where I’d left it. She hadn’t even come upstairs. Of course, it was Saturday...make that Sunday now, and she wouldn’t bother with it unless she got called in for something before Monday.

  Picking the file up from its position balanced on top, I left the bag alone and skirted around the desk to sit down and dig in. Boo made herself comfortable on the floor beside me.

  Things were sure different in 1972 or maybe it was just a difference in agencies or the times. Case files at Customs over the last few years and at most of the police departments I’d dealt with while I was with Young for several years before that, always started with an inventory sheet; sort of a checklist of what was in the file. That might be a few lines for a thin file for a quick, open and shut case like a drunk driver where an officer stopped the offender, administered a sobriety test and then took him into custody. Files at customs tended to be more detailed and have an inventory that went on for a page or more since, at least in my department, we were dealing with lengthy investigations dealing with intricate smuggling operations. This file was reasonably thick for a murder investigation but it lacked any such inventory that I could see.

  Paging through a little more slowly this time, it didn’t appear to be in any particular order either. A sworn statement from Charles W. Knox dated Saturday, November 25th was at the very top. I started to read that but then I shook my head to clear it and paged down through until I found the Sheriff’s report from the scene lodged somewhere near the middle of the stack. I wanted his overview of everything first.

  Sweeney reported that he’d arrived on the scene after a call to his home from dispatch and that he’d relieved Deputy Alex Ackerman to go out and secure the perimeter after getting a verbal report from him. He proceeded as directed by Ackerman to the water closet located under the stairs and found the victim as stated, lying on the floor in said room, in a pool of his own blood. The victim appeared to have a stab wound to the mid chest.

  He didn’t go into detail about the wound. I made a note to search through the file for the Coroner’s report and then continued reading. Sweeney described the room in a little detail and then the downstairs portion of the home as well. A crude drawing of the layout of the downstairs rooms followed that. A deputy was ordered to dust for fingerprints. There was no forensics team to call in, in 1972; at least not on Thanksgiving Day.

  Sweeney noted speaking with more than half a dozen people at the scene and taking formal statements from most of them. He also detailed shaking down every male in the home to confiscate pocket knives and other weapons on their persons and the collection into evidence of all other knives found in the home with an inventory attached as Exhibit A. It wasn’t. I made another note to find that in the file.

  About 4 pages down, I found it. Surprised, I saw no weapons listed other than pocket knives and one pair of brass knuckles, those belonging to the victim himself. ‘He apparently never got a chance to pull them out and use them,’ I thought, wryly. Still, with that knowledge, the picture of the victim became a little clearer for me. He was a brawler and prepared for a fight.

  Multiple household knives were listed on the report. They’d taken everything they’d found at the time into evidence, it appeared, except butter knives. I made a mental note to ask Faye of they’d ever been returned to the family.

  Alex Ackerman’s report was under the knife inventory. He too had gone into detail about the crime scene and all of what he said jived with what the Sheriff said. He mentioned that the Sheriff arrived some 40 minutes after he had and that the ‘natives’, his word, were getting quite restless by then. He stated that the accusations were flying and it was all he could do to contain the crowd of nearly thirty people into the living room of the abode.

  Ackerman had a sheet attached to his own report listing all the names of those in attendance and their ages. In all, more than two dozen people over the age of 18 were present at the time he arrived on the scene.’I bet,’ I thought, ‘there was a whole lot of finger pointing going on by the time the Sheriff got there. Those men were well lubed on beer and whiskey.’

  There was a short, separate note on lined notebook paper from a pocket sized notebook, dated the next day in what I believed was Ackerman’s hand that stated: One Owen Lafferty was incensed at being detained and wasn’t very cooperative at all. There wasn’t a statement anywhere in the file from him that I could find. “Odd,” I whispered down to Boo and made yet another note.

  The Coro
ner’s report was there near the bottom and it was the most enlightening of anything I’d read that far. Mathis had been killed by a single direct blow from what was believed to be a large bladed knife that penetrated the chest wall more than two inches and was jerked downward leaving a nearly five inch cut before it was withdrawn. The murder weapon hadn’t been recovered at the time of the report, made by the Coroner and signed, Friday, the 24th of November, a day after the murder. The report went on to detail the remaining physical condition of Mathis, his blood alcohol level at the time of death, .19, and other steps taken in an effort to collect evidence from his body. The time of death was consistent with what both Faye and Brian had told me.

  I pulled all of the sworn statements out and reviewed them one by one. There were eight. Drew Laffertys statement was the longest and the most detailed but it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. The others ran the gamut from drunken rambling to outright finger pointing with most of the latter suggesting two or three names as potential culprits. Both Horace Bailey and Chuck Knox had statements that were brief and said nothing of value. They both claimed to be watching the Lion’s game when it all went down and no other statement, incoherent as they were, contradicted that.

  There were a few notes in the file to follow up with certain witnesses at later - and, presumably, more sober times. One referenced an off site interview with Owen Lafferty but there was nothing more. Not even an annotation to say if he’d shown or who spoke with him.

  There was nothing, I noted, from Dale Walters. He’d had means and motive and no one talked to him or, at least, appeared to have talked to him even though he’d been on the scene only minutes before the body was discovered by his own admission to me.